Photovoltaic (PV): Putting money into free solar for the state's poorest residents could give the state more solar for its buck than existing incentives aimed at more affluent people, says a study from Vanderbilt University.

Photovoltaic (PV): Los Angeles is going to have to make some changes if it's going to reach its vaunted goal of going coal-free by 2025, and those changes mainly involve making the LADWP's bureaucracy work better.

Photovoltaic (PV): The CPUC just approved a power purchase agreement for a large proposed solar facility in San Benito County. As the area is habitat for several endangered species, wildlife activists are fuming.

Photovoltaic (PV): A proposed solar power plant that some opponents are calling "the worst renewable energy project currently under consideration" in California just found itself some significant opposition.

Government: Jerry Brown was sworn in Monday for an unprecedented fourth term as California's Governor, and he offered some impressive goals in his speech that would push California even further toward a renewable future.

Photovoltaic (PV): A group of Native tribes is hauling the Interior Department to court over the Blythe Solar Power Project, claiming Interior isn't paying enough attention to the site's cultural significance.

Photovoltaic (PV): A national wildlife protection group announced today that it intends to sue the U.S Interior Department for failing to protect the federally Endangered Yuma clapper rail from being harmed at industrial-scale solar power projects in the California desert.

Science: File this under "pretty cool if it really pans out." Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have found a straightforward way to recycle toxic auto batteries into solar panels.

Photovoltaic (PV): A group of solar installers wearing hardhats descended on the State Capitol Tuesday to urge lawmakers to support a bill that would make it much easier to pull permits for rooftop solar projects.

Photovoltaic (PV): The city has installed only two percent of the rooftop solar that's feasible in the city, and raising that figure just to ten percent would create 47,000 new jobs, according to a new report.

Photovoltaic (PV): A new study commissioned by the Nevada Public Utilities Commission finds that rooftop solar panel owners taking part in the state's ongoing net metering program won't be raising the electric bills of their non-solar neighbors.

Transportation: The California Energy Commission will be plowing millions of dollars into building almost 500 more electric car charging stations throughout the state, along with an assortment of other alternative energy programs.

Commentary: Elon Musk's SolarCity, the Menlo Park-based solar panel leasing company, is buying Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer Silevo and will be building one of the world's largest solar panel factories in Buffalo, New York.

Photovoltaic (PV): Inyo County's Board of Supervisors has made a whole lot of people who love the Owens Valley very happy, as it's agreed to remove a large swath of the Valley from designation as suitable for large-scale renewable energy development.

Photovoltaic (PV): With ground broken only quite recently on a 250 megawatt solar project that will cover about 2,000 acres of the Moapa Paiute Reservation north of Las Vegas, the federal government announced approval of a second solar project on the tribe's lands.

Photovoltaic (PV): Here's an idea that ought to be adopted more widely: students on the UC Riverside campus can now top off the charge on their phones, tablets and laptops at tables on campus run by off-the-grid solar power.

Photovoltaic (PV): The L.A. County desert community of Palmdale is adding urban solar in a big way. The city announced Monday that it's building almost a megawatt of solar generating capacity in town to help meet its renewable energy and greenhouse gas targets.

Photovoltaic (PV): Five retired National Park Service Superintendents who spent a cumulative 35 years managing California's three desert National Parks are asking the Bureau of Land Management to move a 4,000-acre solar project they say would threaten the Mojave National Preserve's wildlife, views and groundwater.

Government: The state agency charged with regulating public utilities Thursday announced that Californians who sell utilities extra power from their rooftop solar arrays will be able to keep doing so at current rates for 20 years.

Commentary: A 38-year veteran of the National Park Service who capped his career by spending three years running Joshua Tree National Park has come out against a solar project proposed for the central Mojave Desert in no uncertain terms.

Photovoltaic (PV): The National Park Service (NPS) isn't happy about a proposal to build a large solar facility on almost 4,200 acres next door to the Mojave National Preserve, citing the project's threats to wildlife, rare plants, groundwater, air quality, and wilderness characteristics of the 1.6 million acre Preserve.

Photovoltaic (PV): A solar project that would cover almost six and a half square miles of the California desert near Blythe jumped one of its its final regulatory hurdles this week. On Tuesday, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors gave unanimous approval to the 4,096-acre McCoy Solar Energy Project, which would generate a maximum of 750 megawatts of power if it's completely built out.

Photovoltaic (PV): The group Defenders of Wildlife filed suit today to overturn the Interior Department's approval of two large solar projects planned for the Ivanpah Valley in the Mojave Desert south of Las Vegas, saying that the projects were approved without enough consideration of the damage they'd cause the federally Threatened desert tortoise.

Photovoltaic (PV): If discussion at a recent gathering of desert activists is any indication, a nearly 4,200-acre solar project proposed by Bechtel for a valley adjoining the Mojave National Preserve will encounter near-unanimous opposition from green groups.

Photovoltaic (PV): The push to make L.A. more energy independent is gaining steam, as a group of local, state, and federal elected officials called for California's largest city to meet a fifth of its peak power needs with local solar within six years.

Concentrating Solar: Gizmodo raves about a large glass orb that it says may change the way we use solar power even offering the possibility of generating power from moonlight. Sadly, though the device is pretty nifty, the numbers don't support the hype.

Photovoltaic (PV): San Diego County is working on approval of 1,490 acres of solar projects near the town of Boulevard based in part on wildlife studies performed illegally by a biologist later convicted in Federal court for related offenses.

Photovoltaic (PV): The California Energy Commission on Friday gave a "thumbs down" to a controversial solar tower project in Riverside County. But at the same time, it sent out a tentative "thumbs up" on a solar panel project 40 miles west that has been every bit as controversial.

Photovoltaic (PV): The state broke another record on Tuesday for the amount of solar energy flowing into the state's power grid from large solar installations, with more than 2,800 megawatts of solar electricity recorded by the state's grid operator at just before noon.

Photovoltaic (PV): The Bureau of Land Management is now looking for public comment on a proposed 4,397-acre solar facility between the Mojave National Preserve and the Soda Mountains Wilderness Study Area, in an area that some describe as "core" undeveloped Mojave Desert habitat

Photovoltaic (PV): If you wanted to give some kind of award to the company that just became the largest participant in the L.A. Department of Water and Power's CLEAN LA Solar program, we know where you could get a pretty good deal.

Photovoltaic (PV): A study of 50 solar homes in Austin, Texas hints that simply facing rooftop solar panels west instead of south can make those panels supply a bigger chunk of their owners' energy consumption.

Photovoltaic (PV): Putting solar panels on suitable undeveloped rooftop space in L.A. County could create about half of the electrical power California needs on a typical summer day, and developing just five percent of that rooftop capacity would generate almost 30,000 jobs.

Wildlife: A federal agency estimates that more than 2,000 desert tortoises may currently occupy the sites of a pair of large planned desert solar projects that would straddle the California/Nevada state line, but says developing the projects won't harm the species.

Photovoltaic (PV): A state administrative agency has rejected a bid by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to exempt discarded solar cells from some hazardous waste regulations.

Photovoltaic (PV): A state agency has evaluated the likely effects of a proposed large solar project in eastern Riverside County, and the news isn't good for those interested in the California desert's human history.

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